Top Talent
From emerging to established and our region’s most influential talent of all time, we give you 150+ standout artists selected by some of our community’s leading art aficionados
Images courtesy of Evo Gallery, William Siegal Gallery, Karan Ruhlen Gallery, and Meyer East Gallery
Images by Gerry Snyder, Colette Hosmer, Janet Lippincott and Suzanne Wiggin
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John Addison, Chiaroscuro Gallery
Emerging
Rose Simpson: At 22 years old, this Native American artist is talented, motivated, smart, and humble: a tough combination to find at any age. She conveys distinct ideas about place, identity, and contemporary culture. Seth Anderson: His abstract paintings are coming into their own with his Line Series, the new work gaining attention for its fluid lines, waxy surfaces, and impressive scale. Lisa Holt and Harlan Reano: A dynamic duo. As husband and wife, they create some of the most interesting ceramic pottery within the Native tradition. The pieces are elegant, traditional shapes covered with dramatic contemporary designs.
Established
Johnnie Winona Ross: Johnnie has the ability to distill down to the most essential marks and color without sacrificing emotion and expression. John Fincher: John paints with gusto and vibrato; brushy, strong, and clear. Emmi Whitehorse: Emmi creates an atmosphere in her paintings that you can dive into and feel.
Most Influential
Agnes Martin: When I moved here from New York in the ’90s, one of my first memories was hearing Agnes Martin speak at the Museum of Fine Arts. Listening to her talk about art, I got the impression that New Mexico, its land and people, were what allowed her to paint with such clarity. That clarity is what I was searching for.
Steve Parks, Parks Gallery, Taos
Emerging
Emily Trovillion and Victoria Carlson: They’re both fabulous technicians with outrageous imaginations—Trovillion in painting and drawing; Carlson in watercolors. Much of Trovillion’s work has a post-apocalyptic edge. Carlson’s imagery brims with dream-like authority. Ted Larsen: His career is poised to soar. He made a brave move five or six years ago, shifting dramatically from popular pastel landscapes to abstract, fairly minimal found-object sculpture. Now he’s got galleries clamoring for his work and a Pollock-Krasner grant in hand. Erin Currier: With trash collage and paint, she creates bold portraits of mostly third-world subjects, filled with compassion and political bite. These are politically charged times and Currier’s work is much in demand.
Established
Melissa Zink: She’s had a wonderful career, based almost exclusively on her success showing locally, and she is among the relatively small number of authentically “Blue Chip” New Mexico artists.
Most Influential
I think of those artists who have been most copied: Georgia O’Keeffe of course, Fritz Scholder, and Bill Acheff.
Karla Winterowd, Winterowd Fine Art
Emerging
James Gasowski: His new abstractions are captivating. Alex Gabriel Bernstein: He’s making waves in the glass world.
Established
Tom Kirby and Sarah Bienvenu: Both live and work in New Mexico and are creating their most sophisticated and exciting works yet. Virgil Ortiz: He’s always progressively thinking; connecting culture and art in a meaningful, honest, and engaging way. Alice Leora Briggs: She tackles difficult subject matter with amazing sgraffito technique. The works are heavily labored and always surprising.
Most Influential
Bruce Nauman: The internationally reigning artist—and for good reason. Joel-Peter Witkin: He explores the human condition: soul-stirring works with impeccable composition and skill. How can we ever see still life in the same way again? Agnes Martin: She created magic—elegantly timeless and true. Fritz Scholder: He continues to surprise me, and he influenced painters from every culture, not just Native. Allan Houser: He forever changed the face of Native sculpture.
Diane Karp, director, Santa Fe Art Institute
Emerging
Too many to name, but certainly at the top are: Jennifer Schlesinger, Sheilah Wilson, Keep Adding, Debbie Long, Sydney Cooper, Lory Pollina, Sarah Hewitt, Timothy Nero, Chris Jonas and Molly Sturges, Mary Bonkemeyer, Christy Hengst, Claudia x Valdes, Leland Chapin, Chrissie Orr, and Armando Espinosa.
Established
My top ten: Mary Tsiongas, Susan York, Victoria Carlson, Gerry Snyder, Tom Joyce, Nic Nicosia, Patrick McFarlin, Eugene Newmann, Dana Newmann, and Debbie Fleming Caffery
Most Influential
The top of the top living artists are: Nancy Holt, Bruce Nauman, Susan Rothenberg, Harmony Hammond, May Stevens, Steina, Larry Bell, James Havard, Patrick Oliphant, and Gay Block.
Christie Mazuera Davis, program officer, Lannan Foundation
Emerging
Erika Blumenfeld: This photographer’s stunning minimalist images of light are anchored by her impressive scientific sources of inspiration, such as solar, celestial, and environmental occurrences. Ligia Bouton: Her wide range of mediums, from photography to found objects, craft to finely executed drawings, makes for an art that seems to mirror life but of a world not quite like our own. She captures feelings of voyeurism, thoughtfully examining the role of the subject, artist, and viewer. Jennifer Joseph: Whether in painting or in sculpture, her work demonstrates an elegant touch with a sharp edge, using media such as silver, acupuncture needles, Swarovski crystals, and wire to create works that are deceptively delicate, luring the viewer in like a spider in its web.
Established
Larry Fodor: His use of oil paint continues to expand the medium. His meditative quality conveys a sense of detached serenity, while the rich texture and colors ground them firmly in a physical realm. Jugnet+Clairet: Artists Anne Marie Jugnet and Alain Clairet were drawn to Santa Fe from their native France by the quality of light. The skies, geology, and history here serve as inspiration for collaborations in an array of media, including photography, painting, sculpture, and neon. Iconic images such as sunsets, clouds, mesas, and mountains are reduced to their purest expressions of line, form, and color. Susan York: The thick white walls and dark adobe floor of the Lannan Gallery will be an ideal backdrop for York’s solid contemplative sculptures of finely finished solid graphite (on display this summer).
Most Influential
Michael Berman: Michael has spent most of his career recording the fragile landscape along the U.S./Mexico border. His classic black-and-white images continue in the tradition of Western landscape photography but replace the romantic and ideal with images that document a delicate natural world in decline. Walter De Maria: In 1977, he completed The Lightning Field, a permanent land-art installation in western New Mexico comprised of 400 polished stainless steel poles in a grid measuring one mile by one kilometer. Meant to be experienced over several hours, the work commands the viewer to adjust his or her sense of what is required to view art. Agnes Martin: In 1965, Lannan Foundation’s founder, J. Patrick Lannan, Sr., purchased Martin’s painting The Beach, 1964 in New York. He enjoyed taking risks and investing in artists whose talent may not have been immediately apparent, and Agnes Martin was one of them. It is a pleasant coincidence that the foundation he created has made its home in a place so cherished by an artist he deeply appreciated. Nic Nicosia: Nicosia has been pushing boundaries since the 1980s. In his photography, film, and video work, he directs friends, family, and other “ordinary people” in finely crafted scenes that explore domestic life with a surreal twist. He also creates extensive work featuring himself, allowing the viewer to bear witness to the creation and self-awareness that exists in the process.
Wilson Scanlan, Verve Gallery of Photography
Emerging
Michael Crouser: For ten years, Michael has photographed bullfighting scenes in Spain, France, Mexico, and Ecuador with a masterful eye. His images are ideal compositions of either action or expression. Nevada Wier: Nevada is intrepid, artistic, and compassionate, traveling throughout the world and capturing images that are astoundingly beautiful, whether portraits or landscapes, each with strong composition and rich color saturation. Stephen Strom: For Strom, an astronomer by profession and a passionate photographer as his second avocation, the earth is an extension of the universe. Rather than landscapes made up of the juxtaposition of earth and sky, Stephen’s images are the land vis-à-vis the land, rich in color and wonderful in resonating abstract shapes.
Established
Norman Mauskopf: Norman is a master at capturing the very essence—raw, racy, rich, and revealing though it is—of subculture: rodeo cowboys and racing jockeys, prostitutes and pimps, and now the Hispanic culture of Northern New Mexico. Willis Lee: Willis is uncommonly gifted at everything he does, including alternative processes (from platinum palladium to photogravure and silver gelatin). Completing his latest series, comprised of photographs of objects he constructs, is not unlike composing a piece of music and then performing it perfectly. Janet Russek: Among other things, Janet Russek is a photographic art historian, and in her images, one sees the influence of a century of the creative use of the camera. Yet her work is uniquely hers, both lovely and fetching.
Most Influential
Van Deren Coke: This highly acclaimed photographer, author, curator, and teacher was best known as the director of the Fine Arts Museum and chair of the Art Department at the University of New Mexico. He attracted both national and international attention on the arts, and especially photography, in New Mexico.
